Hours after the Philadelphia 76ers lost at home to the Memphis Grizzlies on Saturday night, news broke that Sixers star Joel Embiid dislodged Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Marcus Hayes in some way during a confrontation in the locker room over a rotten, cynical piece of work Hayes published this past week. That is as determinate of a statement as can be made on the interaction, as the story broke via a series of confusing and contradictory reports that first characterized it as an assault. It doesn't seem nearly that severe, but the NBA has confirmed it is investigating the matter.
"We are aware of reports of an incident in the Sixers locker room this evening and are commencing an investigation," an NBA spokesman said. The public first became aware when Keith Pompey, in the most egregiously out-of-order manner possible, tweeted, "Oh, boy, people will remember the Sixers season for all the wrong reasons. The team just dropped to 1-4 and Joel Embiid assaulted a reporter in the locker room." In a deleted reply to a fan asking for clarification of what exactly Embiid had done to the unnamed reporter, Pompey said Embiid "punched him." Twenty minutes later, ESPN's Shams Charania confirmed that an "altercation" took place, noting that Embiid took issue with Hayes's latest and clarifying, "Embiid shoved the columnist. No punch." Charania's colleague Ramona Shelburne provided the detail that the "shove was to the reporter's shoulder."
The clearest account comes from PHLY Sports' Kyle Neubeck, who recounted the entire string of events that led to the shoulder shove: Embiid noticed Hayes in the locker room and confronted him in a short back-and-forth, with Neubeck paraphrasing Embiid as saying something to the effect of If you ever talk about my family again, we're gonna have real problems, before the argument continued and Embiid shoved Hayes. An unbylined ESPN story recapped the argument and provided more detail:
"The next time you bring up my dead brother and my son again, you are going to see what I'm going to do to you and I'm going to have to ... live with the consequences," Embiid said to Hayes. Embiid continued, with several instances of profanity. Hayes offered an apology, which Embiid did not want. "That's not the fucking first time." Embiid said.
After the shove, a team security employee told reporters not to report the incident, which is very funny and was correctly and immediately diagnosed as a sham by Embiid, who said, "They can do whatever they want. I don't give a shit."
From all the reporting from the locker room, it sounds like Embiid threatened Hayes, but it does not sound much like anyone was assaulted. With that established, we must now consider what made Embiid so mad in the first place: Hayes's column. Embiid has not played this season, as he is managing a left knee injury and doing so in such a way that his team was fined $100,000 for "public statements [...] that were inconsistent with Joel Embiid’s health status and in violation of NBA rules." Leave it to the Sixers to innovate outré NBA regulations to run afoul of, and leave it to a hack like Hayes to spin up a story about a guy with julienned knee tissue trying to preserve his health for the playoffs into a story about a guy being a lazy piece of shit who won't dance for the fans:
The degree of contempt Embiid has for his organization, for his industry, and, especially, for the fans who pay him all of his money is utterly flabbergasting. Because fans buy the tickets, and fans watch TV, and fans buy the products on TV that are advertised. Embiid’s part of the bargain is to show up and play basketball. But he doesn’t even bother to be in good enough shape to hold up this part of the bargain. It is incredible dereliction of duty. It is entirely unacceptable.
This is standard aggrieved columnist fare, replacement-level authoritarian take-slurry excreted from a familiar orifice. The superstar player is an entitled, overpaid layabout is a well this sort of columnist can always draw from, as Hayes has. (Ben Simmons is, admittedly, not the best subject I can use for my case here, but Hayes did call him a child, which is pretty out of bounds.) What elevated this Hayes column was a bizarre swerve into a point about how Embiid missing games is essentially dishonoring the legacy of his dead brother:
Joel Embiid consistently points to the birth of his son, Arthur, as the major inflection point in his basketball career. He often says that he wants to be great to leave a legacy for the boy named after his little brother, who tragically died in an automobile accident when Embiid was in his first year as a 76er. Well, in order to be great at your job, you first have to show up for work.
That line has been deleted from Hayes column. At a press conference two days after the column was published, Embiid called Hayes out for being a dumbass. "I've done way too much for this city putting myself at risk for people to be saying that," he said. "I do think it's bullshit. Like that dude, he's not here, Marcus, whatever his name is. I've done way too much for this fucking city to be treated like this. Done way too fucking much." Hayes, incredibly, doubled down and addressed Embiid's comments while calling him a selfish egomaniac who blew the Sixers off so he could pursue the individual honor of winning an Olympic gold medal in basketball, which is a team sport. The column is stupid—he betrays a boot-licking obsession with how much money Embiid makes— and it ends with Hayes writing, "Shame on him for not taking fuller responsibility for his actions, and his inaction."
Again, his incoherence—it's bad that Embiid wants to be healthy for the playoffs, a critique I can make because he's never won big in the playoffs?—sets the table for the weird, personal stuff. You cannot write like that and expect anyone even vaguely literate, least of all the subject of your column, to respect you.
